The importance of Life Cycle Assessment

Interviewees: Francesca Klack and Riccardo Novelli - LCE Sustainability Experts

1. How would you describe LCE’s mission and what is your role in project EFFECTIVE?
The mission of Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) is to support companies and organisations in improving and communicating their environmental, social and economic sustainability. From the early nineties, our core business has been to provide highly qualified consultancy services, through our interdisciplinary team consisting of experienced engineers, environmental scientists, architects, chemists and biologists.
LCE is a Partner of EFFECTIVE with the aim of developing the eco-design measures for carpet, garment solutions and packaging film as well as evaluating the overall sustainability performance of the new biobased materials realized in this project through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social LCA (S-LCA).

2. What is the role of LCA and why it is important for the development of circular biobased industries?
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a holistic tool able to identify, qualify and quantify significant environmental aspects along the entire life cycle of the biobased product according to ISO 14040/44.
LCA is crucial because it allows the biobased industries to compare solutions at different development/maturity levels and/or with different scales of production, to identify which phases are the main contributors to the overall impact and to make an environmental trade-off. LCA is the most accredited tool by the European Commission to carry out the environmental performance analysis of the innovative products reducing the risk of greenwashing.

3. Where do you see the largest potential of circular biobased materials? 
The Covid era has shown that raw material shortage can threaten the EU area economy and it is necessary to diversify the sources. The circularity of biobased materials is one of the most helpful solutions to be acted. In particular, EFFECTIVE aims at the valorization of innovative low input industrial oil crops in marginal lands (e.g. cardoon) as well as byproducts or waste of industrial process, in high-value added biodegradable products. EFFECTIVE is a great opportunity to valorise raw material currently not exploitable interconnecting the agri-food, bioplastic and farming industries following a bioeconomy circular model.

4. How can we better address the environmental and social impacts of biobased goods?

The environmental and social performances of biobased goods should be proven starting from the sustainability of the feedstock, preserving the soil fertility, the biodiversity, the fertilizers dispersion as well as reducing the water stress. Besides the good and responsible choice of the feedstock there is the energy effectiveness, through the steam recovery or the exploitation of the process residues to produce energy wares. For this reason, EFFECTIVE can be a good opportunity to test the industrial symbiosis with the aim of exploiting the resources with high value avoiding disposal or downcycling. 

Finally, the Eco-design approach adopted by the EFFECTIVE consortium is based on gathering a complete understanding of the reference products, by extending the study to its entire life cycle and value-chain. The aim is to design a regenerative system in which resource input and waste, emissions, and energy losses are minimized by slowing, closing and narrowing material and energy loops. The focus moves from a product-oriented approach to an approach centered on the social and environmental network in which the product is conceived.

5. What would you like to achieve through project EFFECTIVE?
What we have seen so far is that when the efforts and the goals are shared, ambitious results are just around the corner. For this reason, LCE is confident to achieve the goals set by the consortium. Moreover, the EFFECTIVE project could inspire other biobased and circular business model in order to mitigate the environmental burden of different industrial sectors, moving away from a deep fossil-based material dependency, switching to renewable material sources.